Are you using Pinterest for your business? If yes, you need to know how to get more pins that convert to sales. If not, now is the right time to start pinning like a pro.

Just recently, Piqora, an analytics tool for Pinterest, Tumblr and Instragram and TechCrunch released data that show Pins beat Facebook posts and Tweets in terms of selling power. According to the report, a single pin can drive an average of $0.78 to the business, which is $0.20 higher than last time. In Q4 of 2014, it was reported that an average Pin have increased sales by 25%. Furthermore, the data show that a single pin can drive 10 re-pins, 6 page views and 2 website visits.

In October 2013, Seth Fiegerman showed in his Mashable report that publishers get more traffic from Pinterest than LinkedIn, Twitter and Reddit combined. Shown in a Shareaholic presentation, the report shows that 4% of the traffic publishers get in September 2013 came from Pinterest.

These reports clearly show how powerful Pinterest is driving traffic and sales. With that being said, you should start pinning for your business now. But how? Here are 5 Pinteresting Tips for pinning like a pro:

Optimize Your Profile for Pinterest Search

Pinterest has its own Search button and search results. When you get to the top of the search results, you’re bringing your business to more eyeballs; meaning more audience can see your Pinterest Profile, bringing more visitors, website views and more conversions.

For your name, use your branded name and keyword that best describes your business. Using the keyword will help your Pinterest business profile get indexed. Just like this business. When I searched for the keyword “Edmonton Wedding Planner”, this business was the first one in the result.

For your boards, use your keyword as the board title. This board for example uses the keyword Garden Wedding Ideas and it has over 4 million followers.

For your pins, create descriptions that showcase your keyword. Let’s look at this example below. When I searched for the keyword “cute cupcakes” these are the top 3 pins that was shown in the results and if you notice, these 3 pins have the words “cute cupcakes” in their descriptions.

Pin on the Best Times

This article from Mashable talks about the data from the URL shortener, bit.ly, showing Saturday morning is the best time to Pin. Many social media marketers agree to this, as more people login to their social media accounts, particularly Pinterest, on weekends. However if you have a business, you need to be updated to encourage user-engagement. So, you need to pin daily. For daily pins, the best times are between 2-4 pm and 8-1pm.

Make Your Images Taller Than Wider

Taller images get more pins and re-pins on Pinterest. That is why, infographics are very popular on Pinterest. In an infographic by Dan Zarrella, it shows that taller images have pinned and repinned by more users. So, create images that are taller rather than wider.

I searched for the keyword “Valentines Round-Up Food Ideas” and this tall image from The Dating Divas was the first one to show up in the search results.

Meanwhile, this short image below that showed up for the same keyword only had 1 pin.

Imagine the difference in the number of pins.

Pin Images of Objects, Not People

Last year, marketing and visual analytics tool Curalate reported after evaluating 500,000 images, that the visual characteristics of an image can influence the activity in social media. The study confirmed that images that show no face of a human are pinned 23% more than images with faces. The Curalate team also noted that there are 4.25 times more images without human faces, than with human faces in Pinterest.

Interact with Your Users

This is a no-brainer tip, but it is worthy of being reiterated many times. The most important thing in marketing is to interact with your users and know what they want. So, you need to interact with your followers in Pinterest. You can reply to their comments, give them the permission to post to your boards, hold contests, give freebies and more. By interacting, your followers will feel that they belong and when they feel that they belong, they will likely become your super followers, visit your website, buy your products and become your regular customer.

Pinterest is a great platform for promoting your business. When used properly in your marketing campaign, you can generate leads that will convert to sales.

Do you have other Pinteresting Ideas that I missed? Drop it in the comment section below and tweet this to your friends!